[Cooking] Venison steak, stewed red onions, mash

Finally another cooking post!
Yesterday, my butcher had some venison steaks, an offer I couldn’t resist. At home, I marinaded them in rapeseed oil, ground pepper, allspice and thyme for about five hours in the fridge.
I started with the onions by cutting them into wedges and separating those into layers, sweated them off in butter. When softened a bit, I added about a glass of red wine and a good glug of balsamic vinegar, half a Knorr beef stock pot, salt and pepper and let them bubble away gently for about an hour with the lid on.
Next I made a simple potato mash with milk and butter.
I scraped the spices and herbs off the meat, fried the steaks gently in rapeseed oil for about three minutes each side until there they had a nice crust, basted them with a generous knob of butter and then transferred them to a low oven to finish for about 10 minutes.
I moved the stewed onions to the meat pan to deglaze it and reduce the liquid to a sauce to which I added the resting juices from the steak.

As you can see from the photo, the sauce had a wonderful consistency and had a nice sheen to it. The meat was on the spot, too, tender and juicy. I was very happy with how this meal came out, especially as the meat had been a bargain (under a fiver for two chunky steaks).

[Cooking] Two recent fish dishes

I had picked up a mackerel from the wet fish counter at Sea Tree in Mill Road and wanted to make something very simple and quick. I filleted the mackerel (which is very easy compared to other fish), rubbed the skin side with rapeseed oil, seasoned the flesh side with sea salt and pepper and fried the fillets skin side down in a hot pan for about a minute, took the pan off the heat and flipped over the fillets to cook the other side.
To serve I arranged the fillets on simply dressed leaves with orange segments. The bitterness of the leaves with the tart orange worked well together. Blood oranges would have been even better but those weren’t in season.
I have been lax in posting my own cooking recently which was mainly due to not having cooked anything new, exciting or worthwhile to post but here are two:

My friends Heidi and Carri had told me of a van that sells fresh wet fish from Lowestoft next to the Portland Arms pub on Mitcham’s Corner on Wednesdays (from 8:30 to 15:00, I think) and yesterday I finally got up half an hour earlier and took a detour on the way to work. Yesterday, they had cod, haddock, salmon, plaice, Dover sole, herring, sprats, whole squid, prawns, rainbow trout and a few other bits and pieces. Everything looked excellent and fresh. As I knew I wouldn’t have much time in the kitchen, I picked a Dover sole with the plan of poaching it. They even had a few that were already skinned which saved me some time.
Home after work, the fish was still in excellent condition, ever after 9 hours in the office fridge. I made a poaching liquor from white wine, water, a fish stock pot and a couple of slices of ginger and garlic, brought it to the boil, switched the heat off and let it cool down for a while, taking out the ginger and garlic at the end. On a Saturday I would have made my own stock from the bones but I was quite hungry and didn’t want to wait that long. I filleted the sole (you get four fillets from a flat fish) and poached the fillets in the liquor for about five minutes. Then I took them out, seasoned them with salt and pepper and served them on dressed leaves and boiled new potatoes. Next time, i’m going to let the liquor cool even further so they don’t cook quite that much. They were firm but still moist. The flavour was subtle and clean, just what I wanted.

Goat steak and kidneys, asparagus

The third special treat this weekend was some goat. I picked up a steak and three kidneys.
I trimmed the kidneys and seared the chunks before adding some lamb stock to the pan and covering it to finish, seasoning with salt and pepper before serving.
The steak I had marinaded in olive oil, rosemary and garlic for about six hours and then simply pan-fried it to medium, letting it rest while I warmed the kidneys.
I served the steak with the kidneys spooned over, blanched asparagus and crushed potatoes (which didn’t make it into the photo).

I really liked the taste, similar but a bit stronger than lamb but not overly so. As it’s also a bit leaner than lamb, it’s quite surprising goat is not available more widely.

Chicken liver parfait, hearts and asparagus puree

Another special treat from my butcher‘s this week were chicken livers and hearts. These I soaked in milk for a couple of hours to draw out most of the blood.
With the livers I made a basic parfait by sauteeing them with chopped onions, garlic and thyme and then blending them with softened butter and let it set in the fridge for a few hours.
I trimmed the hearts, cut them in half, and gently cooked them in butter until done.
When the parfait was set, I served it spread on toasted rye with the hearts and a puree made from asparagus hearts on the side. This was Sunday’s starter of a rather offal-heavy meal.

Lamb sweetbreads, local asparagus

A new ingredient in my kitchen prompts a new cooking post. My butcher alerted me via twitter that he would have lamb sweetbreads in and while I’ve had them in restaurants I had never cooked with them myself I took this opportunity to try. A little research on the internet revealed that cooking them wasn’t tricky so I picked up three. I boiled them for a few minutes, trimmed them, cut them into bite sized pieces and then tossed them in seasoned flour. I fried the pieces in a little olive oil over medium heat until crispy.
I served the sweetbreads with some blanched local asparagus and drizzled the plate with a good extra virgin olive oil infused with garlic, pepper and balsamic vinegar.

The perfect quick and simple spring lunch.

Spicy chicken thighs with roasted leeks

Last night I finally cooked something that looked good enough to post and I had not really blogged before. I had picked up a few free range chicken thighs from the Art of Meat on Saturday and marinaded them in African Volcano for about eight hours, adding a bit of salt just before cooking. I split three small leeks lenghtwise and put them cut side up in a roasting tray, seasoning with salt and pepper. On top of that I put a rack with the thighs and shoved it in the oven at about 220 degrees for half an hour. The skin had crisped nicely with most of the fat rendered onto the leeks below basting them.

I just served them like that with some sourdough rye toast. The meat was soft and wonderfully juicy, the leeks equally soft and infused with chicken and peri peri flavours. I was very happy with this dish that took all of five minutes to prep.

The spoils of a local farm shop trip

Yesterday @Cambridgelass (who is one of the organisers of Eat Cambridge) and I had a look around a few of the farm shops in Cambs, starting at Gog Magog Hills Farm Shop (where I bought the steak, potatoes, smoked garlic and chard used below as well as some eggs and cheese). Even for the time of year, their selection of vegetables was nicely varied and the butcher’s offers were great, too. It’s times like this I regret not having a kitchen big enough for a freezer because I would have loved to sample more of their wares. As it was I only came away with a ribeye steak. Our next stop was the Shelford Deli in Great Shelford. Luckily for us and without us knowing in advance, the farmers’ market was on at the Memorial Hall across the road so we had a look around there first. A market at a village hall might sound a bit odd but it worked. There was local veg, meat (including from Cam Cattle) and lots of small stalls selling other produce and things like bread, cakes and pastry. I came away with a chunk of osso buco, an Indian savoury chicken pastry thing, a chocolate/lime slice from Gourmandises and some cheese.
At the deli, I bought some bread to go with the cheese and some proper Italian pasta. The deli was very busy indeed as their lunch service had just started.
Our final stop was Burwash Manor in Barton where I bought some more veg and two curry sauces from the larder and a bottle of Montepulciano from Cozzi & Boffa where we had a good chat with the owner. He specialises in wine from small producers and if the quality of the wine I had is anything to go by, the rest of his selection will be excellent, too.

So, what did I cook? On Saturday I cooked the steak:

As I wanted the heavy fat marbling to render properly, I cooked this steak to medium and it came out beautifully tender and juicy, seasoned simply with salt and pepper. Probably the best steak I’ve ever cooked. I had roasted the head of smoked garlic and added about half of it to the mashed potato. The piece of marrow bone, also roasted, was from the piece of Cam Cattle osso buco. The rendered fat from the marrow and the resting juices made a great little sauce. The chard leaves were simply wilted in the hot pan in which I had cooked and basted the steak with butter.

On Sunday, I simmered the osso buco in a jar of medium curry base from Panjaban, adding leeks, the chopped chard stalks and sliced mushrooms:

Spiced Blood Orange Sorbet/Slushie

Kavey Eats has a monthly ice cream challenge called “Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream” in which I have taken part twice so far. This month’s challenge is any theme from the last year so I thought I’d try my hand at a sorbet.

My Riverford box contained blood oranges which were ideal. I zested the oranges then instead of juicing them I peeled them and blitzed them with my stick blender. In a saucepan I combined the juice, zest, half an inch of grated ginger, half a vanilla pod, two short cinnamon sticks, one star anise, five or so bruised cardamom pods and quite a bit of demerara sugar (don’t ask me how much, I did this by eye but enough to make the mix taste really sweet), heated the mix until the sugar was dissolved, pulled the pan off the heat, put a lid on and let it cool off and infuse with the spices. After the mix was cool, I strained it into a tupperware container to remove the spices and put it in the freezer.

I don’t have an ice cream machine so I took the container from the freezer every hour or so and stirred it through with a fork to break up any ice chunks that were forming. In my low rated freezer compartment it took almost 24 hours until it resembled sorbet or, to be honest, more like a slushie as it melts quite quickly. It tastes nice, though, fruity, tangy and spicy so I’m really happy with it.

Served in a tumbler with (shop bought) brownie pieces